Palelabour! Let us go forward!
21 Malachite, 1051. Mid-Summer.
Covenant's Year-Book of the Outpost
Kobolds.
KOBOLDS.
When I find them, I will flay their flesh from their bones and make them dance like marionettes upon spikes at the entrance to Palelabour.
Or have Shep do it, since she's a warrior.
KOBOLDS!
I need to calm down. Sort out the facts.
The kobolds' tribe name and their leader.
All right, not a tragedy. Some kobolds stole our axes and we couldn't catch them. Stark and Shep are training in the barracks right now anyhow. We're going to mine some more copper and make some new axes- there's a pocket of copper right over there that I can see right now.
Problem two- no food? The mountainhomes lied. There's no subterranean soil here. We have to irrigate. There's no time to irrigate, though, because that is a major engineering project and will take months.
Solution? Plant above ground. Ar-Adunakhor has been searching the local plants. So far he's found 3 things.
Corn can be planted, which will grow into ears of corn. This is a good staple crop- like wheat, but different. It brews into Whiskey and can be later milled or querned into some flour for cooking.
Cherries and Lettuce. Not that useful.
So, corn it is, until we can irrigate a farm-room under the mountain. Right now there aren't a lot of seeds, but we can still harvest some food.
Problem three- just as we begin to run out of food, immigrants arrive, like some locusts.
So let's go deal with that. Be back soon, diar- yearbook.
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21 Malachite, 1051, Mid-Summer.
Outside the Fortress
Covenant marched out, attempting to look as intimidating as he could. Along with MKSheppard, he halted in front of them.
Their leader, a leather-armoured giant of over a meter, stepped forward to reply, nodding his head respectfully.
"We come from Stukos Ìrlam, and are the second expedition to Abalèrith."
"Then you have come to the right place. There is much work to be done. First, before anything can be done for you, what can you do for us?"
"I am Rhoenix Rhoeniksson, Ranger," stated the giant, showing his crossbow. It was crudely forged and made of copper, like so many modern crafts in this age, but the quiver on his back shone with a light of its own.
Covenant's eyes widened. Stroking his beard, he pointed to the quiver. "Is that?"
Rhoenix pulled one out. "A score and half of a score of them. Mithril bolts. Mined from the mountains by my father."
Covenant walked down the line. He picked the next person. "You?"
"Nepthys. I am a fish dissector by trade," said the man. Covenant could spy a collection of tiny knives and blades, lovingly mounted on his vest.
"Ah, a fisherman." Covenant gestured to the northwest. "There is a small brook that way. It may or may not contain fish. There are also some sinkholes in the north, you passed by them on your way here."
The dwarf shook his head in a ruefully awkward manner. "Uh, no. I just clean the fish that Fisherman catch."
There was a long pause as Covenant's mind struggled to work with the idea of division of labour. Finally he gave up, patted the man on the back, and said: "Well then, you'll have to go catch some before you do that around here. Next?"
"Vendetta the Brewer, sir!" said the young girl. Covenant smiled and directed her to the kitchen to find Civil War Man. The immigrants got progressively worse as he worked down the line.
"Alan Bolte! Veterinarian!" said the next girl, even more hopefully.
"You're now an animal trainer." replied Covenant. "See to it the Tunnel Worms and Dogs don't starve, too."
Along with Alan Bolte was another girl. She introduced herself as Darth Mordius, and was someone's wife (Covenant didn't catch who it was). Having no useful skills beyond wifely duties, she was given some basic masonry tools and told that her job was smoothing stones to make the dining room prettier.
Next came BilateralRope, a mason. He was directed to the masonry shop where Academia Nut would tutor him in the way of the stone.
Karza was a useless peasant also, and quite obviously dragged along because he was one of the others' husbands. Shep tapped Covenant on the shoulder, and Covenant nodded.
Shep stepped forward to the man and motioned him away from the impromptu migrant processing station. "Come with me," he said.
"Where are we going?" he asked, more interested than afraid.
"You've been drafted. It's either this or backbreaking labour. Which do you choose?" asked Shep. She continued leading him deeper into the fortress, where Stark was waiting at the barracks for his training.
"Do I have a choice?" replied the immigrant, suspiciously.
"No."
Finally, the last immigrant was fnord, who claimed to be a cheese maker. This either made him a terrible liar or the most useless person in the universe. He was recorded in the record-books as a manual labourer, and assigned the job of carrying barrels and furniture from point a to point b.
A cheesemaker? thought Covenant. Perhaps the mountainhomes want us to fail. Were it not for sending the son of Rhoenix The Miner, I would believe it wholeheartedly...
Rhoenix Rhoeniksson. He likes Cheese. Perhaps fuckin' fnord can make some for him? Oh yeah- we don't have milk. Great job.
Nepthys wants to be a warrior, but was born a fisherman's bitch.
Vendetta likes alcohol, is immodest, likes new experiences, and she is very active. Rowr.
Alan doesn't think Covenant knows what a Veterinarian does beyond that it involves animals.
Mordius pretty much likes everything.
BilateralRope also likes cheese! fnord may in fact be useful. Or not.
Karza likes pink. Only the strongest, most soldierly man would wear a pink dress. Yes, he is. A cloth dress.
fnord gets angry but doesn't tell anyone about it. He's probably angry that nobody has any cheesemaking materials.
Now, granted, one out of every four men in dwarf fortress wear dresses, due to the fact that gender-specific clothing is not yet implemented (it'd be a pain to program, apparantly, so it's being put off until later while important stuff like armies and managing a rural town that grows around your fortress are worked on.)
The migrants did discover something interesting- there is a lava tube over where they walked by. There's also lava monsters inside, but that can be dealt with or avoided. Useful for later. For now we need to forge some axes
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9 Galena, 1051, Late Summer [16 days later]
Covenant grimaced. "So, what's the prognosis?" he said, closing his book.
Stark's face was covered in sweat- he had just left wrestling practice with MKSheppard, who was in his spare time teaching Stark and Karza to fight in case of another attack by thieves. Karza's shrieks as he was pinned and his face beaten into the rock floor as punishment for not working were commonplace and accepted noises by now.
Stark shrugged. "If I could make them, you would have had them already. I need fuel to forge something with. We don't have any coal or charcoal."
"Could we mine for the coal?" inquired Covenant.
"Ah, no," said the Smith. "Let me correct myself. I need Coke, or Charcoal. Coke is made from Coal by processing it. We have a little coal already, left over from the journey and forging the picks and axes, but no coke."
"And can we process it?" asked Covenant. Stark finished a swig of whiskey, and then shook his head.
"To process it, we need to, well, basically roast it. That takes charcoal, coke, or magma to produce those temperatures."
"So you're telling me we need charcoal. Which comes from wood. In order to cut down a tree, we need a tree cut down already!" Covenant stood and slammed his fist into the wall, hurting it severely. "What can we do, then? Wait for the caravan and hope they are carrying logs or an axe by coincidence? Ask the mountainhomes to cut us down a tree and ship it?"
Stark finished his mug of whiskey and paced back and forth. "Covenant, there's only one thing I can think to do. We can take the anvil and go place it forge assembly over by the magma pool. And forge with that."
Covenant nursed his broken hand. "Will that work?"
Stark shrugged again. "It could. It will be very dangerous, and it's very far away to carry the materials by hand to build it, but it's possible."
Covenant nodded. "Then it's all we can do. We can't wait for anyone else to do this for us- Palelabour must forge its own destiny!"
Stark sighed. It was a terrible pun. "Academia Nut and I will get on it as soon as we eat and maybe go to sleep. The magma pool won't be going anywhere."
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Notes on Palelabour: as of 12 Galena, there are exactly 4 seeds planted- 3 corn and 1 cherry plant.
As far as food goes, nepthys has been fishing in a small pool by the lava chamber- it's how we know it's not instantly fatal to approach- all the monsters must be sitting at the bottom. The two animals seen nearby as he fished were a fire snake winding through the liquid rock and a ghost bat winging its way overhead.
Nepthys has caught 7 turtles and 1 live snail, which we can't be arsed to cook so it will be eaten alive and raw. Civil War Man is too busy planting seeds (or would be, once he wakes up from his rest.)
Palelabour's food stocks are not at a critical level, but they're not improving and there's absolutely no surplus in production at very best. We have 3 heads of lettuce, 8 seafood, and about 40 or so of Civil War Man's creations. I'm not sure if they should be listed as food. Anyhow, 50-60 pieces of food will last 3-4 meals for 15 citizens, which is probably until next year. Dwarves don't eat a lot.
As far as Drink goes, we are not doing well. Civil War Man informs me we have about 20 units of alcohol, which is enough to last until the end of autumn. Probably. Production of more cherry schnapps and whiskey is the number two priority of the fortress, to keep morale high.
The 1st (and possibly only) harvest will be of, at most, 6 corn and 3 cherry bushels. This could be converted to 45 alcohol, and alcohol biscuiting one third of the units will produce 25 food and 30 alcohol, which might last another season. Second harvest would contain no more than double the first, and might not be possible before winter, even assuming corn and cherries can grow during the autumn months in these climes.
Anyhow, that brings me to the food produced by Civil War Man. Alcohol Biscuits aren't the only thing he's been producing. Actually, a bug in the fabric of reality means that biscuits don't exist anymore, so we're scared to try to make them. Instead, he's diversified his... crafts...
Here are some examples of Civil War Man's culinary artistry including some comments from Covenant:
- Stews
- Type 1 Meat Stew, containing Black Bullhead, mule, and pig.
- Type 2 Meat Stew, containing Sailfin, Groundhog, and Naked Mole dog.
I have it on good authority from Stark that both of them taste roughly the same, so it's best just not to worry about what the meaty chunks are.
Dumplings - Cave Dumplings, containing Musk ox, cave lobster, and cave fish
- Bushmeat Meat Dumplings, containing warhog, chimpanzee, and fox.
Pies - Seafood Pie, containing Char, perch, and rock lobster. This one actually isn't that bad. I dared have some.
- Meat Pie, containing Bonobo, rabbit, and mountain goat. Clever how he forgot to tell anyone what type of meat it was. Bonobo?
- Lungfish Pie, containing lungfish and auroch. He's good at pies, I'll give him that.
Scones - Meat Scones, containing beef, camel meat, and some fish. Look, that's just impossible. You can't make meat into a scone. It's just not natural. A second variant uses wolf, venison, and racoon. I don't know what these are, but they're not scones like he claims.
Cake - Meat Cake, containing loach, elk, and marmot. Someone needs to teach Civil War Man that while meat is good to cook, one can't make everything out of it. I'm more wondering where he got the materials to make a cake, though. Strange.
Gruel - Wine Gruel, made out of some unidentifiable tough organic stuff and some Whitecap and Blackcap wine. This is apparantly an upgraded version of wine biscuits.
Cookies - Sea Cookies, containing snail and trout. How did he make? Into a cookie? But? I don't understand.... my head hurts...
But this one deserves a paragraph of its own:
Civil War Man's Special Salad- made out of horse meat, tunnel worm (cavern rabbit), and large rodent. With small amounts of lettuce and cabbage added to hide the flavour. We're pretty sure this one can kill at 20 yards. Nobody's been brave enough to sample some yet, and several of the immigrants have vowed to turn to cannibalism before doing that.
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14 Galena
A tragedy. I don't know what was going on inside Karza's head, but he ran away from the fortress. The giant ants that live in the tunnels of the western side of the mountain appear to have got him before he made it very far. This is the safe side of the mountain, usually full of only stray tunnel worms. We should have told the immigrants how dangerous the other side is.
Nobody is blaming Shep for his disappearance. She didn't drive the man insane with her training. At least, we hope not. From the looks of it, according to fnord, who volunteered to go look for him, he put up an okay fight for an unskilled warrior- there was, intermingled with the pools of blood, some spatterings of ichor.
Unfortunately, it is too dangerous to go retrieve the corpse. We will build an empty tomb to him. We have named the ant responsible Kisatkälán (Empty Trail) and it has become our foe- we will some day seek it and kill it.
Even if it was his fault and his stupidity, he will be avenged.
16 Galena 1051- The Death of Karza, Soldier-in-Training at the hands of Kisatkälan the ant, having dwelled in Palelabour for only 23 days.
RIP.
The first death of the Dwarven Outpost of Abalèrith. We will miss Karza and his pink dress.
